"it's just a phase," they told me.

can phases kill you?

"it's just high scool," they told me.

it's loneliness, it's hell, it's almost fatal.

and the only words that I remember, the words that stand,

are "freak show girl"

Freak.

Show. 

Girl.

That night, I almost died,

almost decided

they were right about me. 

But someone else found me first,

someone who placed a pen in my fingers,

someone who told me,

"write your own story, not the one they chose for you."

So I wept on paper--

fingers trembling, blood racing, pouring onto the page,

it became my own story, my definition,

the words that became my salvation.

what is this mystery? that hope often looks like

nothing more than a pen hovering over blank paper.

the freak show girl clutches a fistful of words to her chest,

holds them in her ragged palms,

sings them through her sharp, unforgiving teeth.

and one day, when she had changed her own life,

she takes that fistful of words and holds it out to another,

another frozen freak show girl,

another lonely wanderer, and speaks the words that once saved her:

"tell your own story, and not the one they chose for you."

this is how you change your story.

this is how you change the world.